ABSTRACT
The preceding chapter, ‘Geographia, prospectus, pictura’, considered how three fields of study-and particular movements within them-came together to develop a concept of mountain landscape. The chapter went on to show how such a landscape began to be appreciated in a positive aesthetic light. The present chapter will undertake a similar synthesis of disciplines in showing how attitudes towards the mountain changed in theological and natural philosophical texts. Just as in the earlier chapter, the relevant disciplines for this chapter were not as sharply distinguished as they are today. Indeed, for almost all the writers considered here the modern distinction between the two modern disciplines would have been incomprehensible. To use the ancient analogy, God’s ‘Book of Nature’ and his Bible were to be read together.1
